You need one of four things to make your startup a candidate for VC investment

Yes, there’s just four. No, they’re not easy to achieve but here they are.

I spend most of my consulting days with founders and teams ranging from idea stage to minimum viable product (MVP) to early commercialisation, so I get asked one question a lot, “What will angel or venture capital investors want to see from us before we’re good candidates for investment?”

It’s just four things, and you only need to achieve one of them to qualify for consideration by venture investors.

The long answer is: every investor is different

Every investor is motivated by a different risk/reward ratio, interested in different markets, business models and technologies, likes to lead other investors or likes to follow other investors, can only write a cheque smaller than X or no bigger than Y.

The short answer is: every investor is the same

If they know what they’re doing, they’re looking for startups that bring one or more of the following assets to the deal table:

1. World class team

Everybody’s definition of “world class” is different.

Some investors may be prepared to back raw talent and no prior experience, as long as they can get some…